


Don't Take The Money

by lesbiancharliekelly



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: F/F, First Kiss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-26
Updated: 2020-06-26
Packaged: 2021-03-03 22:49:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 15,723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24933286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lesbiancharliekelly/pseuds/lesbiancharliekelly
Summary: When a charged encounter with Carol in the school parking lot during prom leads Nancy to worry that smoking weed has made her gay, who should she then run into in the bathroom but one Robin Buckley? Will this chance encounter somehow help their mutually disastrous prom nights turn around? Or are they both too obstinate to realize there might be something else underneath all their arguing?
Relationships: Robin Buckley/Nancy Wheeler
Comments: 8
Kudos: 113





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is inspired by a post from [this tumblr user](https://tibby.tumblr.com/). I can't find the exact post but they have very good Stranger Things takes in general, go check them out!
> 
> Title from the Bleachers song, obviously. Content warnings: drinking/smoking, but not to worry -- no first kisses until everyone is good & sober! Story is set after season 3 but if the Byers didn't move away. I have watched the series multiple times but honestly can never keep timelines & everyone's ages straight so let's just assume for the sake of this story that the school year after the summer in season 3, Steve/Carol/Tommy graduated, Nancy/Jonathan are seniors, and Robin is a junior. Idk if that fits w/ cannon exactly but oh well.

It’s prom night and Nancy is in a bad mood. If she’s being honest, she’s usually in a bad mood. Finally, all the monsters are dead, and she’s wearing a gorgeous pink dress, and she’s at prom with her boyfriend, but still she’s in a bad mood. When Nancy got drunk and spilled wine on her white clothes and told Steve she didn’t love him before she’d even realized that herself, Jonathan had appeared just in time to take her home. That had felt like a sign. Her relationship with Steve had been perfect, from the outside. He was popular and handsome and even trying to be nice, plus he had helped her fight off the Demogorgon. But once they were actually dating, it had all felt too perfect, hollow on the inside.

So she’d figured with Jonathan, what she was feeling must be real. He wasn’t the popular boy all the girls fawned over, so she figured she must really like him for him. Shared trauma and all that. But she’d been feeling, recently, an uncomfortably similar lack of _something_ that she can’t quite name. And now here she is, again, mad at her boyfriend for no reason in a crowd of all their peers.

Jonathan hadn’t even wanted to go to the prom, of course. Nancy had practically had to drag him here, after all those times of Steve practically having to drag _her_ out to parties. That was just the problem, though. When she’d been with Steve she’d been so uncomfortable, felt like they were playing at normalcy, felt like she’d been chasing some idyllic teenage-hood only to find it didn’t fit once she’d gotten it. She’d thought things would make sense once she started dating Jonathan, another person who she knew felt like he didn’t fit in. But once things had died down – once finally, shockingly, they weren’t running from or chasing after monsters, once they could just _be_ for a minute, she’d found herself still unable to sit still.

With Steve, Nancy had always had to be on display, to talk to people she didn’t want to talk to. But Jonathan always wanted to listen to his weird loud music alone in his room. When _Nancy_ was alone in her room, she sometimes let herself picture, just for a moment before falling asleep, what she really wanted. And when she did that, when she admitted to herself that maybe what she wanted was something more, or something different, _again_ , what she pictured was not any boy, but friends. Not the kind of friends she and Steve had had, not like anyone she knew at school, not like anyone except, well, Barb. With Barb, unlike with Steve and Jonathan, she hadn’t had to wonder who she was or if she was happy. She just was. She and Barb fit together. Well, they had, until Nancy had started to get restless, until she had messed everything up, until – but she didn’t let herself go there, to think that, anymore.

So what she wanted wasn’t to go to prom, not really. Not with Jonathan. But she also didn’t _not_ want to go to prom. It was hard to explain. Often, Nancy felt like she was crazy, like she always wanted the opposite of whatever the person she loved the most did. Like, okay, if she’d been dating Steve, maybe she would’ve wanted to skip prom, but because she knew Jonathan wouldn’t want to go, she wanted to. She worried, a lot, that she’d only wanted to go to that party that night Barb died because Barb hadn’t wanted to. But again, that was something she didn’t let herself think about anymore.

In any case, despite whether either of them had really wanted to go or not, Jonathan had taken Nancy to prom. Of course he had. He’d grumbled about it, he’d asked her why she was interested in the crap, but once it became clear she was going with or without him, he’d bought her a corsage, found something semi-decent to wear. She’d had to go eat dinner at his house before they went, instead of him picking her up and taking her out to some local restaurant like all the other kids. She’d grumbled about that, but secretly, she’d been glad to. Jonathan had asked her if she would because he’d known it would mean a lot to Joyce to see them “do normal shit.”

Nancy loves Joyce. Joyce is nothing like her own mother, who, after one moment in the kitchen telling Nancy that it’s hard to be a girl, had once again disappeared from her life. In fact, her mom was currently on some weekend-long vacation with her dad because they wanted to “reconnect.” They’d sent Holly to the grandparents and asked Nancy to babysit Mike, not even seeming to realize it would be the weekend of prom. Neither Nancy nor Mike had bothered to inform them – Mike was only too happy to play his weird wizard games while Nancy was out.

Joyce, however, was very much there when Nancy had gone over for dinner earlier tonight. She’d gasped when she’d seen Nancy’s dress and said, “Oh, honey, you look gorgeous” in a voice so sincere Nancy had excused herself to the bathroom for a minute so no one would see her tear up. And when Nancy had composed herself and come back to the living room, Joyce had even helped Nancy do her hair.

So the dinner had been sweet, actually. It wasn’t Joyce who was the problem, it was her son. Nancy didn’t know what she’d expected to happen. She and Jonathan had been fighting constantly, about everything from politics to what song to listen to next. She didn’t know why she’d expected being at prom to magically fix that. They had walked in the door and of course there were all their same classmates, all the people who they didn’t really like and who didn’t really like them. And of course the music that was playing was always something Nancy liked but Jonathan didn’t, so the last half hour had consisted purely of Nancy trying to convince Jonathan to go out and dance with her.

And now she’s finally snapped. “You won’t look stupid, if that’s what you’re worried about,” she tells Jonathan, shifting from one foot to another, uncomfortable in her new heels. The two of them are standing in a corner of the gym, next to the bleachers. Jonathan is sitting down but Nancy refuses to, as that will just put them one step further from getting out onto the floor and finally, actually dancing at their prom. “There are a lot of worse dancers here than you.”

“Gee, thanks, Nancy. I wasn’t worried about that, actually, but now that’s another I can be depressed about besides this abysmal music and our abysmal classmates,” Jonathan replies.

“Well, if you’re really not going to dance with me, I’m going outside to get some air.”

“Fine,” Jonathan says. “Do you want me to come with you?”

“Do you _want_ to come with me?”

“Jesus, Nancy, it was just a question!”

She doesn’t reply, instead pushing past him and through the crowd toward the door. Mr. Clarke is chaperoning and starts to tell her that he isn’t supposed to let her back in once she leaves, but he has to shout the end of his sentence after her, as she ignores him, pushing open the double doors. Even though it’s just past sunset, the air is still so hot and humid it feels sticky. Nancy can feel the heat radiating off the black tar of the parking lot as she makes her way somewhat aimlessly out into the night. She hadn’t thought past, _Get out of the gym and as far away from Jonathan and everyone else as possible_ , but she’s now realizing that she has no real way to get home if Jonathan doesn’t drive her.

She half-considers just walking home out of sheer stubbornness, but if her heels are already hurting her from standing still, she knows will not survive the walk. Instead, she decides to go sit on Jonathan’s car and sulk until he finally feels bad enough to come out after her. As she starts walking across the parking lot, though, she hears someone say her name.

“Hey, Nancy,” comes a disinterested-sounding voice from somewhere off to her right. She whips her head around and sees, to her surprise, Carol. Carol is sitting in the passenger side of a beat-up car with the windows rolled down, and she’s smoking a joint. Nancy considers walking right past Carol as if she doesn’t notice her, but she’s in the kind of bad mood where she almost _wants_ to hear what shit Carol was going to say to her. Plus, she half wants to try some of the joint – sobriety is feeling less and less fun by the minute.

“Hey, Carol,” Nancy says, matching Carol’s disinterested tone and making her way over to the car. Carol leans out the window slightly, taking a drag of the joint and not bothering to blow the smoke away from Nancy’s face. Nancy pretends not to be bothered by it and leans against the passenger side door of the car next to where Carol is, crossing her arms. “What are you doing here?” Nancy asks Carol. “Pretty pathetic to be hanging around prom a year after you graduated.”

Carol rolls her eyes. “Pretty pathetic to be hanging out in the parking lot during your own prom,” she shoots back. “Tommy is making some deliveries, for your information. Earning money as we speak.”

“Oh, great, so he’s literally a drug dealer now?” Nancy says. “I can’t say that I’m surprised.” She knows this is probably not a good thing to say if she wants Carol to offer her a hit of the joint, but she can’t help herself. She’s still against marijuana on principle, even if she wants to try some right now. She wants to try some right now precisely _because_ she thinks it is a bad and stupid thing to do.

“He makes more money than most of the kids from our town. Like, what, Harrington with his part time job at the video store?” Carol tells Nancy. “I would’ve said congrats on dumping that loser except that I heard you’ve started dating perhaps the only guy that’s more of a loser than he is.”

“At least I’m not pathetic enough to still be keeping tabs on the relationship status of people I don’t even go to school with anymore,” Nancy says.

“Don’t try to lecture me on who’s pathetic,” Carol says. “Why are you out here, anyway? Finally realized Byers is wacko and that you’d rather take your chances with whatever creeps might be lurking outside the high school gym?”

“You seem to be the only creep out here currently, and I figure my chances with you are fine,” Nancy tells her. She keeps eying the joint, wanting to try some but not wanting to ask. She keeps looking at Carol as she takes drags between bantering, looking at the way her lips close around the joint, at how she always manages not to smear whatever baby pink lip gloss she has on. _I’m looking so I’ll know how to take a drag if she offers it to me,_ Nancy tells herself. 

Nancy doesn’t know why she keeps standing here to talking to a person who openly despises her. It feels like a scab she can’t stop picking at, like the pain is more bearable if she keeps poking at it, if she feels like she’s the one causing it. And Carol, for her part, isn’t telling Nancy to get lost. In fact, Carol seems to be perfectly content talking to Nancy. Part of it is probably that Carol seems to be perfectly content doing almost anything. And part of it is probably also that Carol has nothing else to do besides smoke her joint and talk to Nancy until Tommy comes back with the keys. There’s a silence, for a minute, as neither of them want to leave but both of them realize they don’t really have anything to say to each other. Then Nancy speaks up.

“It really sucks in there without any booze,” she says in what she hopes is a casual tone. She wants to see if she can get Carol to offer her the joint without having to actually ask.

But Carol doesn’t, of course. “I bet,” she says. “There isn’t much about high school that’s good sober.” Carol is looking pointedly at Nancy now. Nancy can tell that Carol knows she wants to try the joint but that Carol wants the satisfaction of actually hearing Nancy say that out loud.

Nancy can’t decide what’s more important to her, her stubbornness or her wish to be inebriated. Without realizing it, she must’ve started frowning because Carol laughs at her and says, “You’re pouting like a little kid. What, the joint giving you a headache?” She waves it close to Nancy’s face.

“No,” Nancy says, and finally gives in. “Actually, I was wondering if I could have some.”

Carol raises her eyebrows at her. “Are you sure you want to? I don’t want to corrupt such a pure and innocent soul as Nancy Wheeler.”

“Yes, I’m sure,” Nancy snaps. It’s all she can do to keep herself from snatching the joint out of Carol’s hand just to win the argument and see the look of surprise on her face. She settles for saying, “Come off it, Carol. You’ve seen me drink at parties.”

For a minute, Carol just sits there taking another drag off the joint, and Nancy thinks Carol might not even reply at all. But then she exhales and says, “Well, what the hell. This weed is shit anyway.” She reaches out the short distance between them, offering the joint to Nancy.

Nancy takes it and feels Carol watching her as she puts it to her lips. She knows Carol is watching to see if she’ll fuck it up, and she does her best to copy exactly what Carol’s been doing the whole time. She is very aware of putting her lips where Carol’s had been mere seconds before, and she does her best to inhale lazily. But the instant she feels the smoke hit her lungs, it’s even harsher than she imagined it would be, and she finds herself coughing so hard that her eyes water and she almost drops the joint.

Carol starts laughing, of course. Nancy figures she’s past maintaining an air of cool about her, so she just says, “That’s _awful_. No wonder it’s illegal.”

Carol rolls her eyes. “Well, if you hate it that much give it back to me.”

“Take it,” Nancy tells her, handing the joint back over gladly. She waits to see if she feels anything, but finds that she feels as sober and as lousy as ever.

“Here,” Carol says, ducking back into the car to rummage through the glove compartment with one hand while she uses the other to continue to hold the joint out the window. “I hate to see your prom night ruined by sobriety. Ah, here we go.”

She pulls out a flask and, to Nancy’s surprise, actually opens the door to get out of the car instead of just leaning back out the window. Closing the door behind her, she hands the flask to Nancy, then leans against Tommy’s car so that they’re standing facing each other. Nancy takes the flask and grimaces immediately after taking a swig of it. It’s whiskey, really cheap stuff from the taste of it. Not her favorite, but better than the joint, at least. So she takes a few more sips from it in quick succession.

“Wow, someone’s looking to get sloppy drunk tonight,” Carol says. The parking spaces are small, and Nancy and Carol’s faces are so close to each other in the dark that Nancy can feel the heat of the joint as Carol brings it back up to her lips and inhales again.

Nancy feels her face getting warm and a strange rushing in her head. She wonders if it’s the joint and the whiskey hitting her all at once. Neither she or Carol says anything for a minute, both silently imbibing their chosen substances instead.

“See?” Nancy says, finally, after she’s drank enough whiskey to feel lightheaded and heavy all at once. “I’m not always such a good girl.”

Carol lets out a short, snorting laugh at that. “I never really thought you were,” she says. “Always seemed a bit too perfect, to me. A bit too uptight. People like that are always hiding something.”

Nancy leans in toward Carol so she can give her some sort of conspiratorial smirk. “What am I hiding?” she asks.

“I don’t know, Nancy,” Carol says, not leaning away and smirking right back. “Why don’t you tell me? What are you hiding?”

And then the strangest thing happens. Maybe it’s because they’re fighting, and Nancy only ever seems to fight like this with the boys she’s dating, and maybe it’s because she’s been so focused on Carol’s lips as she’s watched her smoke the joint, but suddenly Nancy wants to kiss Carol. There’s barely any space between the two of them, and Nancy doesn’t move, not any closer and not any further away, but she can picture so clearly what it would be like to close that last bit of distance between them. But a second after she has the thought, she can feel her cheeks flush, and she leans back and drops the smirk from her face. _I’m crazy,_ she thinks. _I’m really going crazy. Is this what marijuana does to you? Is this why you aren’t supposed to smoke it?_

Carol gives her some sort of look when she leans away, and for a second Nancy is worried Carol knows exactly what she was thinking. But then Carol just says, “I don’t know, Nancy. What are you hiding underneath your many layers of frigid bitch?”

But bantering with Carol is no longer fun. Nancy likes to push and to push, but now she feels like she’s pushed the situation too far and she is once again no longer in control. So she says, “You know, now that I’ve had some booze and you’re back to insulting me, I think I’m going to go back to my prom. Have fun hanging around waiting for your loser of a boyfriend.”

“Oh, Nancy,” Carol says patronizingly, as if there are many things that Carol understands that Nancy does not. Then she adds, almost sincerely, “I wish you the best of luck. You can even keep the flask. My little gift to you on your prom night.” Nancy is almost sort of touched when Carol adds, “You’re going to need all the whiskey you can get if you and Jonathan are intending to make this night _special_.”

Nancy looks back long enough to give Carol a disgusted face, deciding she doesn’t need to grace that comment with a reply. After storming so determinedly out of the gym mere minutes ago, she now finds Jonathan the preferable option to Carol and the parking lot. She feels off balance, and not because of the new heels or the alcohol. Still, she’s not sure how she’s going to get back in past Mr. Clarke, let alone with a flask too big to hide in her bra.

Nancy decides to finish off the rest of the whiskey before she attempts to go back inside, ducking down by some kid’s new car halfway between Carol and the gym doors. Then she tosses her head back and drains the rest of the flask as quickly as possible. She cringes as it stings her throat, but she hopes it will counteract whatever weird shit the weed was putting in her head. She’s not sure that’s how alcohol or weed works, but it’s the best she’s got. Once it’s all gone, she leaves the flask on the ground next to the car and strides determinedly back toward the gym, trying on the way to come up with some sort of excuse to give Mr. Clarke.

Turns out she didn’t need to have worried, though. As she gets closer, she sees that Mr. Clarke is actually standing just outside the gym himself now and is preoccupied talking to someone else. To Tommy. She hears him telling Tommy, “Now, I don’t know why you’re here, and, if I’m being honest, I don’t want to know. If you’ll just leave the school grounds right now, I won’t call Hopper over here, and this can be the end of it.”

Nancy puts on her most carefree smile and breezes right past the two of them. Mr. Clarke pauses and glances at her, obviously torn about whether to finish dealing with Tommy or trying to stop her from going back inside. “Now, Nancy, wait—“ he says, but she ignores him. After a second of hesitation, he turns his attention back to Tommy, leaving Nancy to push her way through the double doors and back into the gym.

Jonathan is sitting in the exact same corner of the bleachers where she left him, all by himself of course. _Doesn’t he ever try to have fun?_ Nancy thinks to herself, irritated already, but she pushes the thought aside as she strides up to him, determined to get Carol out of her head. Walking up to Jonathan, she grabs his hand, clearly startling him. “Let’s go have fun,” she tells him, attempting to pull him onto the dance floor.

Jonathan, however, resists her tugging at his arm and remains sitting on the bleachers. “Why do you smell like alcohol? Why do you smell like _weed_?”

Nancy rolls her eyes in her best imitation of Carol. “Oh, come on Jonathan, it’s prom night. We’re supposed to drink.”

“Um, I thought we decided we weren’t going to. Where did you even get alcohol? You get mad at me, storm out of the gym, somehow get drunk in about ten minutes, and then we’re supposed to just forget all that and have fun when you decide you want to?”

“Oh my God, Jonathan,” she says. She half tries to whisper, half doesn’t care who hears them as she leans over toward where Jonathan is still sitting to tell him, “I’m a teenager at my prom who drank a little bit. So sue me. While you’ve been sitting around waiting until they play some song that nobody but you even likes, I’ve been out talking to normal people who do things that normal teenagers do, like drink, not sit in their room all the time acting like they have all the reason to be depressed when their brother came back and Barb didn’t!”

Jonathan flinches at that, looking surprised. Even Nancy is surprised. All she’d wanted was one night where she could forget about Barb. But of course she couldn’t. Not here. Not when she knows that Barb would’ve been out on the floor dancing with Nancy to Wham! even if she was embarrassed and thought prom was dumb. That was the difference. Barb would do things that Nancy wanted to, even when Barb herself didn’t find them fun. Barb cared about Nancy more than she cared about her dignity or her principles or anything stupid like that. With Jonathan, Nancy isn’t so sure.

“Nancy, I don’t—“ Jonathan starts, then stops. “I mean,” he says, after a minute. “I know what happened with Barb was sad. Is sad. But this isn’t how you should handle it. I’m worried, this isn’t like you—“

Nancy cuts him off. 

“This isn’t like me? Do you even know what I’m like, Jonathan?” Nancy doesn’t bother to whisper as she says this. She can tell people around them are definitely starting to glance over but she’s past caring. 

“Do I know what you’re like? Uh, yeah, I think I do.” Jonathan then gets really quiet and says, “We’ve literally fought monsters together, I think we know each other pretty well. You’re tough and smart and not the kind of person who gets angry and drunk over some prom drama.”

“So what we’ve fought monsters together,” Nancy hisses back. “When have we had one normal date? I don’t want to be part of some monster-fighting team, Jonathan. I want to be a girl who has fun at prom!” Even as she says it, she feels that isn’t true either. She doesn’t know what she wants, but it’s becoming more and more clear to her that this isn’t it.

“Well I’m sorry that I can’t, like, fit in with everyone else, Nancy. I gave up on trying a long time ago. It just doesn’t work. If you want some preppy zombie boyfriend who will take you to go buy milkshakes at Pop’s dinner or whatever maybe you should go get back together with Steve.”

“Maybe I _should_ go get back together with Steve,” Nancy tells him. She says it not because she cares about Steve anymore, not in that way, but because she knows it will hurt Jonathan. For a minute they just stand there saying nothing to each other, just staring at each other.

“You know what, Nancy? I’m going home. Are you coming with me?” Jonathan says.

“No,” she says. “I’m not.” Jonathan waits for a minute more before shrugging and walking away. She knows she should just let him take her home, but that feels like that would be losing, like admitting she was wrong. She is sick and tired of Jonathan being the nice boy who takes her home when she’s drunk and doesn’t even try anything. Because she is sick of being the girl that needs taking care of. She isn’t a nice girl. She is mean, and she deserves to be left alone. She doesn’t want to stalk back out to the parking lot where Carol might still be, and she doesn’t want to stay here where people are staring at her. So instead she stalks out of the other gym exit, the one that leads into the school and towards the bathrooms.

The girl’s bathroom is mercifully not that full. There are two girls by the sink, one of them smoking a cigarette while the other looks in the mirror and reapplies her lipstick. They are talking about some boy Nancy has never heard of and wondering if he likes lipstick girl, whose name is apparently Sarah. There is also someone puking in one of the toilets – Nancy can’t see who it is, as the stall door has swung mostly closed. Nancy walks past the girls at the sink and to the far end of the bathroom, sliding down the wall to sit with her pretty dress on the gross tile floor, not caring what she might be getting on it. 

The girls at the sink ignore her, and when they leave after a minute or two, Nancy takes a deep breath. _Finally, I’m alone,_ she thinks. Just then, though, the puker comes out of the stall. And who else would it be but Robin Buckley.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Idk if this is exactly the slang people would use for weed in the '80s but I'm not about to do my research on '80s slang because I'm too lazy, so forgive me if they use slightly idiosyncratic words/phrases.


	2. Chapter 2

Of course it’s Robin that was puking in the stall. Robin, the girl that was with Steve that night in the parking lot almost a year ago. If there is one thing in the world Nancy didn’t want right now, it was to be reminded of her ex boyfriend and most recent monster encounter all at once. Robin glances at Nancy briefly but doesn’t seem to really register who she is – they haven’t really seen each other since that night in the parking lot (aside from occasionally passing each other in the hallways), and Robin looks pretty out of it, mascara running down her eyes and hair disheveled. Nancy watches as Robin makes her way to the sink and lets the water run, splashing it onto her face.

Nancy hopes that Robin will pull herself together and maybe leave without saying a single word to her, and then she will finally, blissfully, actually get to be alone. But of course she’ll have no such luck tonight. Because as Robin turns to grab some paper towels, she looks at Nancy again, and seems to finally register who she is. “Jesus Christ,” she says, jumping slightly, then laughing. “Of course it’s you. Nancy Fucking Wheeler.” Robin holds the paper towels in her fist without making actual use of them, letting water drip down her chin and onto her dress.

“It’s great to see you too,” Nancy replies. “You look lovely.” She hadn’t even had anything against Robin, not really, but she can’t help but match Robin’s tone, her seeming annoyance at running into her.

“Oh, shut up,” Robin says. “I know I look bad. It’s this ridiculous dress.”

Nancy looks at the dress, which is pretty simple; it only comes down to her knees and it’s all black, cinched at the waist, with a square neckline and thick straps. It’s not half bad, and though Nancy’s instinct is of course to snap back at Robin, Robin sounded so defeated when she said she looked bad. Plus, Nancy can’t help but think that fighting with Carol led her to a very weird place.

So instead, she tries to compliment Robin. The problem is, the effects of chugging the last of the whiskey outside in the parking lot seem to be really catching up to her, so instead of saying something normal, she says, “Oh, come on, it doesn’t look half bad. Your mascara looked horrendous, sure, but you got most of it off your face. The dress is nice. It makes your collar bones looks nice. You have nice collar bones.”

_You have nice collar bones?_ Nancy thinks to herself in horror. _What the hell is wrong with me tonight?_

Robin seems to also be taken aback by Nancy’s comment. She leans against the sink and looks down at Nancy on the floor, considering her for a second before saying, “Thanks.” Nancy is hoping that’ll be the end of it and that Robin will leave, but instead Robin adds, “You look good too Nancy. Even though the dress is a little frou-frou for me.”

“A little bit frou-frou?” Nancy says, looking down at herself.

“Yeah, but I mean, it’s kind of fitting for you.”

“Fitting for me? What does _that_ mean?” Nancy says. To be honest, she’d felt weird about the dress all night. She’d bought it because it felt like the kind of thing you were supposed to wear to prom, not because she actually really liked it.

“Oh, come on,” Robin says. “Don’t play dumb. You know you’re Little Miss Gets Good Grades _And_ Dates People Like Steve Harrington. Well, until you dumped him. But still. The ruffles and glitter and little matching high heels and your hair is perfect…”

“You think my hair is perfect?” Nancy asks her, smiling a bit ruefully.

“I didn’t say that,” Robin immediately contradicts her. She finally seems to realize she’s still holding the paper towels and uses them to dry her face, then chucks them in the nearby trashcan and crosses her arms, leaning her hip against the sink and she continues to survey Nancy. The intensity of Robin’s scrutiny is so much that it’s all Nancy can do to keep from looking away. _Does she look at everyone like this?_ Nancy wonders to herself.

“I think you did say that,” Nancy says, but instead of pushing the issue more, she just says, “Thanks. I could use the compliment after the night I’ve had. It doesn’t seem like you’ve been having such a good time yourself.”

Robin shrugs. “I don’t know why I even came tonight. I couldn’t go with the person I wanted to.”

“Steve?” Nancy asks.

Robin literally snort laughs at this. “No, not Steve.”

Nancy shrugs. “I don’t know. You were with him that night in the parking lot. You guys are, like, always together at the video store.”

“Not all of us use monster-hunting as a way to meet boyfriends,” Robin says.

“Yeah, well, it hasn’t worked out so well for me yet, so that’s probably smart,” Nancy tells her.

“Really?” Robin says. “You and that guy Jonathan seem pretty close.”

“I don’t know,” Nancy says, not knowing why she’s even telling Robin all this even as she says, “I used to think we were soul mates or something, like destined to be together. I know that sounds stupid. But we’d been through so much, with the… you know. I’m sure Steve told you about it. The monster shit. Anyway, he’s the only one I can really talk to about all that crazy stuff, aside from, like, my baby brother. But now I’m not so sure I even like him anymore.”

“He always struck me as kind of annoying,” Robin says. “But then, so did you, so I thought hey, those crazy kids just might make it work.”

“Look, you don’t have to hang around with me if you’re just going to keep insulting me,” Nancy tells her.

“Oh, no,” Robin says. “I was in here having a bathroom meltdown first. I’m not going back out there.” As if to prove her point, she steps away from the sink and slides down the wall adjacent to Nancy, sitting at a 90° angle to her so that their feet are almost touching.

“Well, neither am I,” Nancy says, crossing her arms. Somehow, sitting here with Robin, all the anger that she’s been feeling all night is gone. Maybe she’s just too tired to keep feeling it anymore. Maybe it’s just that they are, as Robin said, both having a bathroom meltdown during prom and they can’t help but feel some sort of comradery beneath the layers of sarcasm and insults. Whatever it is, Nancy isn’t leaving this bathroom, at least not right now. “Just how I always wanted to spend my prom,” Nancy says. “In the bathroom with you. As long as we’re both here, are you going to tell me about your boy trouble?”

Robin snort-laughs again, although Nancy feels like she doesn’t quite get the joke this time. Robin says, “No, I’m not going to tell you about my boy problems.” Then she crosses her arms too. “I would ask you about your boy problems except I don’t really care and also I’m kind of tired of being forced to better get to know and even like people I formerly hated while covered in puke in a bathroom.”

“Are you telling me you make a habit of puking in bathrooms in front of people you don’t like?” Nancy says.

“Well in my defense, you weren’t in here when I started puking. If I had know you were going to come in mid-puke I would’ve told my esophagus to hold on a minute or two so I could’ve puked after you left.”

“Lovely.”

“See, this is what I mean. Mrs. Perfect. Can’t take a little puke talk even while sitting on the bathroom floor.”

“For your information, I have seen much grosser things than you puking,” Nancy says. “I don’t know why you have such a problem with me.”

“I don’t, really!” Robin says. “I’m just some girl you don’t know who thinks you’re a little bit too stuck up sometimes. I don’t know why you have such a problem with me having such a problem with you.”

“That doesn’t even make sense,” Nancy says.

“From one drunk person to another.”

“I’m not just drunk,” Nancy says. “I’m also _stoned_.”

Robin raises an eyebrow at her. “Are you really?”

“Yes,” Nancy says. “You saw me pull a gun on someone and you’re surprised that I’m _stoned_?” Nancy doesn’t even know if she’s stoned, not really. She doesn’t know what being stoned is supposed to feel like. But she knows she feels weird. Ever since that moment in the parking lot with Carol.

“I don’t know,” Robin says. “I thought the gun might’ve been more of a one-time thing. Life or death. You know.”

“This was life or death too,” Nancy says. “My boyfriend was killing me.” She laughs.

“That’s not funny,” Robin says. “God, you’d hope smoking weed would’ve loosened you up more or made you more funny or _something_.”

“I can’t help it,” Nancy says, looking down at her prom dress. “I’m here at prom with a boy I don’t like, and I went outside to try and get some air and Carol was, uh—well, it was weird.”

Robin looks at her. “Carol? Like Steve’s former friend Carol? Didn’t she graduate?”

“Yeah,” Nancy says. “Long story.”

“Long story in the parking lot with Carol,” Robin says. Nancy doesn’t like the way Robin’s looking at her. “Look, speaking of Steve, I actually called him using the office phone a while ago, and anyway he’s coming to get me and is probably here by now, so I should go.” She stands up, pausing before she turns to go, and tells Nancy, “Uh, have a good night, I guess.” She walks out before Nancy replies.

After Robin leaves, Nancy continues to sit on the floor sullenly. Instead of being hung up on Jonathan, or worrying how she’ll get home, Nancy finds herself replaying moments in the parking lot with Carol and in the bathroom with Robin. Carol asking her what she’s hiding, how small the space between them was, her wanting to kiss—and then Robin, what Nancy had said about her collar bones. She can’t help thinking that Robin really did have nice collar bones. _Is this what weed does to you?_ Nancy thinks. _I smoked weed once and now I’m noticing girls? In a weird way?_ She tells herself it’ll go away in the morning.

She’s still lost in thought, trying to calm herself down, when who should walk back in to the bathroom but Robin herself.

“Me coming back here wasn’t my idea,” Robin says, walking over to where Nancy is still sitting against the wall.

“No?” Nancy asks, looking up at her.

“It was Steve’s,” Robin sighs. Hearing his name, Nancy feels all sorts of weird feelings that she can’t name, all at once. She thought she was done with Steve taking care of her. She likes it and she hates it all at once.

“Really?” is all she says.

“I guess he ran into Jonathan in the parking lot as he was leaving, and Jonathan asked him to give you a ride.”

Nancy can’t help it. She starts cracking up at this, even though Robin is looking at her like she’s crazy. Is this all she’s destined for? To be passed back and forth between disgruntled boys, relying on the charity of whichever one currently dislikes her the least?

“Well?” Robin says. “Do you want a ride or not? I really don’t want to spend any more of my night in this bathroom.”

Nancy considers saying no, but getting a ride from Steve right now just feels so perfectly, awfully fitting. Plus, she really does have no idea how she’d get home later if she says no now. “Okay, fine,” she says, and waits for a minute. After a while, Robin seems to get the hint and holds out her hand to help pull Nancy up off the floor.

Nancy and Robin head out of the bathroom, back into the gym, and straight for the exit. “Really no re-entry this time!” Mr. Clarke calls after her as Nancy follows Robin out into the warm night air.

“I know, Mr. Clarke!” she calls over her shoulder as the doors are closing behind her. “I’ve got a ride! Thank you!”

By the time she makes it over to the car, Robin is already sitting shotgun, so Nancy climbs into the back. It feels weird to be in Steve’s car again, let alone with some other girl in the front seat, even if that other girl isn’t his girlfriend, supposedly. Steve turns around gives her a small but genuine smile. “Hi, Nancy,” he says. “Sounds like everybody is having a great night tonight.”

“Yeah,” is all she says in reply. Still, it’s nice. It’s the first time she’s been around Steve in a while – again, since that night in the parking lot – and all the tension that used to hang around between them feels like it’s finally dissipated. She’s not sure if it’s that Steve’s changed, or she has, or both of them. But whatever the cause, she’s glad.

Steve starts driving, and no one talks. The radio is on so low Nancy can’t even really tell what song is playing, just that something is. She thinks it might be Tears for Fears. She stares out the window and realizes that Steve is headed toward her house. “I assume I’m taking you home?” Steve asks Nancy as they get closer to her street.

“Uh, yeah, thanks,” she says.

Then Steve turns toward Robin and asks, “Do you want me to drop you off at your place after we drop her off?”

“I don’t really know if I should go home right now,” Robin says. “You know my parents are waiting up for me, and I look terrible, and I’m worried I might still smell like booze.” The two of them are talking pretty quietly, and Nancy can tell she’s not really supposed to be a part of the conversation, but she can’t help listening.

“I don’t know, you don’t look that bad,” Steve says, glancing over at Robin briefly before returning his eyes to the road.

“Oh, jeez, thanks,” Robin says. “What a ringing endorsement.”

“Here, breathe in my face,” he tells her.

“What?” Robin says, more loudly now, seeming to forget about Nancy entirely.

“Breathe in my face!” Steve says. “I’ll tell you if you smell like booze.”

“Okay, fine,” Robin says, and leans over closer to him to do just that.

Immediately, Steve makes a face and visibly recoils. “Your breath smells _disgusting_ ,” he tells Robin.

She shoves him in the shoulder. “Shut up, Harrington.”

He takes a hand off the wheel briefly to shrug at her. “Hey, I’m just trying to give you honest feedback so you know if your parents’ll flip.”

“Oh, God, they really are going to flip,” Robin says, leaning back and clutching her head with her hands.

“Well,” Steve says, glancing back at Nancy for just a second and hesitating before saying, more quietly again to Robin, “do you, uh, want to stay at my place?”

“At your place?” Robin says. “I think it’s even worse if I don’t come home at all than if I come home smelling like booze. They’ll definitely flip out if you don’t drop me off till tomorrow morning.”

Watching the two of them, so oblivious to her, Nancy feels lonely, even worse than she’s felt the rest of the night. All she wants is to sit in the back seat as inconspicuously as possible until she can slip quietly out of the car in a few blocks, put on Belinda Carlisle, and cry herself to sleep. What she says instead, though, is, “Come to my place.”

They both glance back at her, as if surprised to see that she’s even still there. Steve even lets out a small laugh before immediately affecting a more serious expression.

“Sorry, did you just ask me back to your place?” Robin says, turning around for the first time to look at Nancy.

“Yes,” Nancy says obstinately. “It’ll solve your problem. You can call them from my house and tell them you’re having a sleepover with some of your girlfriends. You can put me on the phone and everything, have me talk to them about how there will be no alcohol or boys at the sleepover. I’m very convincing. Parents love me.”

“It’s true,” Steve says. “She was great with Barb’s parents.” Nancy sees him run a hand through his hair immediately after saying this, his same old nervous habit, and she knows he regrets bringing up something like that, something so sad, something that they went through together. She feels a twinge somewhere inside her stomach, not for Steve, but for Barb, but she ignores it.

“Yes,” she says, barreling forward and past any of the awkwardness or pain, using his comment to help her possibly win an argument for the first time that night, “exactly. Steve knows. I’m great with parents. This way, they don’t know you were drinking _and_ they don’t think you were with a boy. You don’t even have to actually stay. You can call them from my phone and have them talk to me, and then you can go stay with Steve.” She remembers the little she knows about Steve’s dad, and adds quickly, “Or you can stay with me. I don’t care. I have a big house, you can sleep on the couch. We don’t even have to talk to each other, you can leave early the next morning.”

Nancy doesn’t know why she’s going above and beyond to help Robin out. She knows Robin doesn’t even really like her. But she can’t help thinking back to how peaceful she felt, for just a second, when she and Robin were bantering on the bathroom floor. It felt familiar, like the back and forth she had with Carol or so often with Jonathan, but devoid of the malice so many of her other conversations unfortunately seem to hold. Familiar, but better.

Robin’s just been looking back at her, considering. By this point, they’re on Nancy’s street. “What about your parents?” Robin says. “Won’t they care?”

Nancy shakes her head. “They’re out of the house, gone all weekend.”

Robin stares at her a little longer. “Okay,” she says finally. “Yeah, thanks. I think I will stay at your place.”

Steve glances at Robin briefly, and Nancy thinks he looks somewhat surprised, but all he says is, “Great!” as he pulls into Nancy’s driveway. The atmosphere in the car is tense, but no one says much. They all seem to know that Robin staying at Nancy’s is weird, very weird, but also that it’s probably the best option.

“Great! So,” Steve says again as he put the car in park, bouncing both hands off the steering wheel for emphasis and then just letting them rest there as he doesn’t continue the thought.

“Yes, great,” Nancy says, hastily unbuckling and extracting herself from Steve’s car. She has decided that if she just plows ahead like this normal, maybe she can convince herself that it is. Still, as she gets out of the car, she can’t help thinking back to when she first asked Jonathan to stay the night. She knows this is nothing like that – avoiding parents when you’re drunk is not _nearly_ on the same level as fearing for your life because of some unknown monster. So she pushes the thought aside as she makes her way up to the front door and fumbles with her keys.

When she gets the door open, she realizes Robin isn’t behind her. She lets the door swing open into the empty house (Mike is sleeping over at Lucas’s tonight for some the aforementioned nerdy game thing) and sees Robin still sitting in the car, talking to Steve about something. Robin sees Nancy glancing back at her and waves, as if to indicate that she’ll be in in a minute, then starts to take off her own seatbelt. As she gets out of the car and begins walking toward Nancy, Steve pulls his car out of the driveway, pausing to wave at Robin before driving away.

So then it’s just the two of them. Really, truly. No other drunk girls in the bathroom, no dance on the other side of the door. “Well, come in,” Nancy says, walking into the living room and turning on the light switch as Robin follows and shuts the door behind her.

“Wow,” Robin says. “Nancy Wheeler’s house.” But then she quickly adds, “Sorry. I mean, thank you for having me.”

Nancy shrugs. “It’s fine.” She walks over to the phone and hands it to Robin. It’s 10:00 – they both managed to bail on prom a full two hours before it was done, which is maybe pathetic for their social lives but good when it comes to having to call Robin’s parents. Robin’s parents pick up pretty quickly, and they talk first to Robin, then to Nancy. It takes a bit of doing – including Nancy saying very sweetly that her parents went to bed early tonight because her little sister Holly has been waking up at 5 every morning, but that she can wake them up to put them on the phone if Robin’s parents like – but they eventually agree to let Robin stay over.

After she hangs up the phone, Nancy gives Robin a look. “I told you I was good with parents,” she says. Then she walks into the kitchen, turning on the light and rummaging through the fridge for something to eat. She’s suddenly starving. Behind her, she hears Robin pulling out one of the kitchen chairs and sitting down. As she considers the options in the fridge, Nancy realizes that while she’s very hungry, she doesn’t want to go through the effort of actually cooking, so she closes the fridge and goes into the pantry instead. Aha! _There_ they are. She _knew_ there was a box of Oreos in here. She pulls the box out, hopping up on one of the counters a little bit away from where Robin is and pulling out a sleeve of Oreos. She eats the first one in one bite and immediately goes for another one.

Robin laughs at her. “Got the munchies?” she says.

“What?” Nancy says, her mouth full of Oreo.

“Cause you’re high. Being high makes you really hungry,” Robin tells her.

“Oh,” Nancy says. “Yeah, I guess so.” She eats another Oreo before realizing she’s being rude. She holds out the sleeve of cookies, waving it in Robin’s general direction. “Do you want some?” she asks.

Robin shrugs. “Yeah, sure,” she says, getting up from the table and coming over to grab two cookies from the bag. She eats them much more slowly than Nancy, opening them up to eat all the cream before the cookie. When she’s done she starts rummaging through the cabinets. “Do you have water glasses?” she asks.

“Yeah, the cabinet to your right, the top one next to the fridge,” Nancy says.

“Oh, thanks.” Robin grabs a glass and goes to the sink to fill it up.

“What is being high even supposed to do to you?” Nancy asks. “Besides make you hungry?”

Robin shrugs, turning off the sink and taking a sip of her now-full water glass before setting it on the counter across from Nancy and hopping up there herself. They sit across from each other, Nancy continuing to eat the full sleeve of Oreos, Robin swinging her legs and drinking her water slowly. “I’ve honestly only smoked weed a few times, but it’s just supposed to, like, make you more chill. Which I don’t know if it is doing for you.”

“Well, I guess I’m just not as cool as you,” Nancy says. “I don’t know how to smoke weed right.”

Robin rolls her eyes. “Am I supposed to feel sorry for you? Am I supposed to say, ‘No, Nancy, it’s so cool that you smoked weed in the parking lot during prom. I was wrong, you’re not a Claire, you’re Bender!’”

“Like from The Breakfast Club? I like Claire. I don’t _want_ to be Bender. I can be Claire and still smoke weed. Don’t they all literally smoke weed? Also isn’t, like, the whole point of that movie that everyone got along with each other at the end?”

Robin rolls her eyes. “I bet Claire is a bitch to all of them at school on Monday.”

“Oh, what, come on,” Nancy says. “Like Bender and what’s her face – that girl with the dandruff – like they aren’t way too hung up on how they’re _so weird_ and _so not like other kids_ to even try and make friends.”

“ ‘The girl with the dandruff?’” Robin repeats, sounding indignant. “You are so _not_ shitting on Allison right now!”

“Look,” Nancy says between bites of Oreos, “I can’t help it if you relate to her too much because people like you and Jonathan purposely act weird and listen to weird music because you don’t want anyone to like you, and I can’t help it if Steve could only focus on everyone liking him until he got enough concussions to stop caring, leaving me the only person who cares about whether people like me a normal amount.”

“Oh, you only care about how people like you a normal amount?” Robin says. “That’s definitely why you offered to let me, a person who openly professes to dislike you, stay at your house. Definitely not out of a compulsive need have everyone like you, even if you dislike them.”

“God, I’m sorry for trying to be a nice person. If you’re going to be so ungrateful go call Steve and have him come pick you up.”

“No, no, I’m sorry,” Robin says.

“What’s even up with you and Steve anyway?” Nancy asks. “You’re not dating but he drives you around and picks you up from a school dance that he didn’t even go to?”

“He was just doing me a favor as a friend. Since he was like Mr. Popular in high school he was dead set on me not missing prom, and since he knows I don’t have a car and didn’t have a date he offered to help me get there.”

“Right. So, you didn’t have a date and he’s not dating anyone else right now, right?”

“Why do you care, Nancy? Are you trying to get back together with the guy? He was pretty hung up on you for a while, you know. I think you should leave him alone.”

“I’m not trying to get back together with him,” Nancy says. “Just—I’m just curious. Is he dating anyone?”

“No, he’s not.”

“And you really don’t have a crush on him?”

“Oh my God, no, I don’t, okay? I never understood what everyone found so attractive about Steve, to be honest.”

“No, that’s exactly it!” Nancy says, and she can tell she’s surprised Robin with how empathetically she gestures as she continues, “He’s, like, this perfect guy, right? But I just, like, couldn’t make myself like him, not really. So I was just curious, you know. Why you didn’t like him either. I mean, in that way.”

Robin is looking at her warily now. “I really don’t think he’s perfect, Nancy,” she says. “I think he _thought_ he was perfect in high school.”

“Yeah, but, I mean, after I broke up with him it sometimes felt like every girl in the school was looking at me like I was crazy.”

“Nancy, I think a lot of people think he’s cute, yeah, or whatever. But thinking someone’s cute doesn’t mean the relationship will work out. I mean—what I’m trying to say is, there are a lot of factors that go into dating someone, I don’t think we’re so crazy or special just because we don’t want to date Steve.” She pauses and takes another sip of water, then adds, “Look, do we have to talk about this? It’s kind of weird. I mean, he’s my friend, and no offense, but I barely know you.”

Nancy looks down at her bag of Oreos. “Yeah, yeah. Sorry.” For a minute they just sit there. “I just don’t—you know, this is the first sleepover I’ve had with a girl since Barb died.”

There’s silence for a minute. Nancy looks back up at Robin, who gives her that same pitying look that everyone gives her when she brings up Barb. But at least from Robin, it looks sincere. Like she’s actually sad for Nancy, not just making some face to look like she cares. “Wow,” Robin says finally. “That sucks. That must suck. Sorry, I, like, don’t really know what to say about your dead friend.”

“No, it’s okay,” Nancy says, looking back down and picking at the ruffles on her dress. “I don’t really either. It’s just—you know, I feel like she _got_ me in a way that no one else did, you know? Like, I could ask her all these questions, like, what’s crazy, what’s not. I don’t know. I mean, a lot of times I didn’t listen to her. Like, she kind of told me not to date Steve. Not in so many words. But I knew she thought that it, like, _‘wasn’t me’_ or something. And at the time, I didn’t listen to her. But she was right, you know? Only now I can’t ask her about it, I can’t ask her why she thought that wasn’t me, or what she thinks about Jonathan, or why I don’t like any of these boys. I feel like I knew who I was, when I was with her. And now I don’t know. I have no idea.”

“That sounds really nice,” Robin says. Nancy glances up and sees that Robin isn’t looking at her, either, she’s looking down at her feet and she continues to swing her legs idly back and forth. “Having a friend like that, I mean. That you can talk to about anything. I’ve never really had one. I can’t imagine what it would be like, having someone like that and then losing them.” She pauses and laughs a little before adding. “I guess Steve is, like, weirdly, the closest thing I’ve had to that. But even then, like, you know. He’s Steve. I don’t know.”

“Yeah,” Nancy laughs. “I know.” She hesitates for a minute before asking, “Who was that person you wanted to go with to the dance tonight?”

Robin shakes her head, smiling a little as she says, “Nancy, I really don’t want to tell you.”

“I just—okay, you said you’ve smoked before, right?” Nancy asks.

“Yeah, why?”

“I just—is that really all being high is supposed to do? Like, just make everything seem funny?”

“Uh, yeah, I think. I mean, every time I’ve done it everything just gets slower and kind of melt-ier and more funny. I don’t know.”

“But it doesn’t like—I mean, has it ever made you feel, like, not yourself?”

“ ‘Like not yourself?’ ” Robin repeats. “I don’t know. What do you mean?”

“I mean, like, well—I just wanted to kiss someone, tonight, after I smoked weed, someone that I really normally wouldn’t want to kiss.”

Robin is looking at her again. Not like Jonathan looks at her, or like Steve used to, where she can tell what they’re thinking, where she can tell they think she’s pretty and they’re happy just to look at her. When Robin looks at her, she looks like she’s still trying to figure her out. Eventually, Robin asks her slowly, “Like who did you want to kiss?”

“Like, well—“ but Nancy can’t make herself say it. If Barb were the one sitting across from her, maybe it would be different. Maybe she could have ask Barb is smoking weed can make you feel like you want to kiss girls. Although Barb, of course, would have never smoked weed in her life. But as much as she _wants_ her prom night to feel like it would’ve with Barb, a sleepover where they could tell each other everything, Robin doesn’t really know Nancy. More than that, she doesn’t even really _like_ Nancy, and if Nancy asks her this and it’s _not_ how smoking weed has ever made anyone else feel, Robin might just run from the house screaming.

Still, she’s drunk enough and maybe also high too (she still doesn’t really know what that’s supposed to feel like) that she doesn’t want to just stop talking, to just let it drop. It’s not just been Robin observing Nancy all night. Nancy’s been looking back, trying to figure out Robin too. And unlike with Steve, or with Jonathan, she doesn’t feel like she’s cracked it yet. So Nancy asks Robin, “Did you mean it when you said I didn’t look half-bad earlier?”

Robin sighs. “Sure, Nancy. Like I said, the dress suits you, I guess.”

“Have you noticed that boys don’t ever really say that?” Nancy says.

“Say what?”

“Compliment your dress, or things like that.”

“I didn’t really compliment it,” Robin says.

Nancy waves her hand around as if dismissing the comment. “No, but I mean. I don’t know. Boys don’t notice things like that. Like when your hair looks nice, or something. Barb always told me when my hair looked nice.”

“Yeah, I mean, I guess that’s more of what girlfriends are for,” Robin says.

“Did you ever wish, like when you were little, did you ever think—or like when we were in middle school, when the boys started to date the girls, I mean—wouldn’t it be easier—I mean, I just think I _get_ girls and I don’t get boys. I want to spend time with girls, you know?”

“Oh, that explains your large group of girlfriends,” Robin says, “that you’re always hanging around with.”

“Are you seriously being a bitch to me right now about the fact that my only friend died a few years ago?” Nancy says, raising her eyebrows at Robin.

She expects Robin to back down, to apologize quickly. Instead, Robin laughs, and says, “Yeah, I guess I am, a little. I mean, it’s sad that Barb died, but it’s also kind of sad, in a completely different way, that you never made any other friends after that.”

“Yeah, well, coming from the girl who just told me that _Steve Harrington_ is the closest thing she’s ever had to a best friend,” Nancy says, smiling. She likes that Robin is giving her shit for this.

“That is _not_ what I said.”

“Yeah, well, it’s not _not_ what you said,” Nancy tells her. “I don’t know. I mean, look at the two of us. Both with no friends. Both not wanting to date Steve Harrington. I don’t know, maybe we’re more similar than we think.”

“This isn’t the Breakfast Club, Nancy. God, I already did this with Steve, I _don’t_ need to have some weird heart to heart with you too.”

“Fine,” Nancy says, crossing her arms. “Then don’t.” They sit there for a minute in silence and Nancy finishes off the Oreos. As she eats them, she tries to get everything straight in her head: why she felt like that with Carol, what she wants to say to Robin now. Why _is_ it so important for her to have some sort of heart to heart with Robin? But she can’t seem to get past whatever effects the alcohol and weed are still having on her and come to any sort of conclusion.

After finishing the rest of the Oreos, she hops down off the counter to throw them away. Instead of hopping back up on the counter, she walks back over to where Robin is and stands there, telling her, “I can get you some sheets and make up the couch if you want to go to bed by 11 pm on our prom night.”

“What else are we going to do?” Robin says. “I already puked. I don’t think I feel the need to get much more rowdy than that. Plus, this isn’t _my_ prom night. I’m sure next year my senior prom will go much better for me than yours seems to be going right now.”

Maybe it’s because she’s now standing almost as close to Robin as Carol had been standing to her, and because she doesn’t want to have to go to bed and be alone with her thoughts, and because she’s trying to work out what happened between her and Carol in some weird way, but whatever the cause, Nancy finds herself saying, “You’re right, this isn’t really your prom night. Which means you should take pity on me for having such a bad prom night. My parents have a ton of alcohol. We could make horrible vodka drinks and play spin the bottle.”

As soon as she says it, she can’t believe the words left her mouth. It’s the kind of thing you can say in a room full of people, but not when it’s just you and one girl. It’s the kind of thing her and Barb used to do, but only when they were really little.

Robin raises her eyebrows. “I think you’re only saying this because you’re drunk and because you _haven’t_ puked up all of it like I have.”

And Robin’s probably right, she probably _is_ still very drunk, because instead of backing away from what she said, Nancy just says, “What, so you’re saying you _don’t_ want to play spin the bottle with me?”

She can’t explain what it is that’s making her say these things. The closest thing she can compare it to, really, is when she first found out the Demogorgon was real, when she told Jonathan that she wanted to kill it. It had been terrifying, and horrible, and she wishes more than anything that Barb hadn’t died because of it. But there’s some secret, small part of her that looks back on it with some sort of twisted nostalgia. What she told Jonathan in the gym is true; a monster killer, that’s not all of who she is. But it’s _part_ of her. She’s someone who knows that there are things in the world that most people don’t want to see, and she doesn’t want to run away from that. She wants to come closer, gun in hand, confront it, see what she can do with that reality, see what it can do to her. 

And it must be part of Robin, too, because instead of pushing Nancy away, she starts to lean closer. Neither of them closes their eyes; they keep staring at each other like they have been all night, waiting to see what the other person will do. Robin’s breath really does smell like booze and puke, and Nancy can see that her lips are chapped, but she doesn’t care. Just when Nancy thinks Robin might actually kiss her, though, is when Robin pulls back.

“You’re drunk, Nancy,” she says, and hops down off the counter.

“You didn’t answer the question,” Nancy tells her. “Do you not want to play spin the bottle with me?”

Robin gives her one more long look. “Tell you what,” Robin says. “Help me make the bed on the couch and then, in the morning, if you still want to, I will.” And then Robin turns around and starts walking purposefully out of the kitchen, not looking back, so Nancy can’t see what it is her face looks like after she says it.

Nancy follows Robin out into the living room and sees her sitting resolutely on the couch, evidently waiting for Nancy to bring over some sheets. They don’t look at each other as Nancy walks past her, behind the couch and then up the stairs where the linen closet is. Even though she knows Robin probably can’t see her very well from where she’s sitting, Nancy doesn’t turn on any lights. The moon is bright enough in through a nearby hallway window that she can sort of see what she’s doing as she looks as she fumbles around for some sheets, but she’s grateful for the semi-darkness.

She can feel her heart beating hard against her rib cage, and for a minute she doesn’t even really know what it is she’s looking for, her hands trembling as they rearrange old quilts and freshly-washed duvet covers. For a minute, she gives up the pretense of looking for anything at all and just presses her face into some of the sheets, closing her eyes. But she knows Robin is waiting downstairs, so she starts looking again, pulling out some things that will work well for making up the couch.

Just as she is about to turn and go back down, though, she realizes Robin has nothing to sleep in aside from her dress. Nancy stands at the top of the stairs for a minute, unsure if it’s worse to literally give Robin some of her clothes after how she just acted or force Robin to sleep in a puke-covered dress. She remembers that night when Jonathan first stayed at her house, how she could barely sleep because she kept picturing the monster. Her heart is beating just as fast now, but for entirely different reasons. She remembers telling Jonathan, _”I don’t want to be alone. Do you?”_

As weird as Nancy feels about it, she decides to go to her room and get something for Robin to sleep in, if she wants. She tries to rifle through her dresser quickly, but it’s hard not to over-analyze what to pick for Robin. Finally, she finds a clean, oversized t shirt from a camp she and Barb used to go to together, one that was still pretty new when she stopped wearing it, and some cotton shorts. Making her way back down the stairs, she tries to take a deep breath before walking over to where Robin is on the couch, still sitting just staring straight ahead.

Robin looks startled to see Nancy. Nancy doesn’t even really look at her as she hands over the blankets and the clothes. She rushes out all at once, “Here’s some stuff for the couch plus I realized you probably don’t want to sleep in your dress so I got some clothes for you to borrow if you want, they’re clean obviously but also if you want to sleep in your dress obviously that’s fine too the bathroom is to your right and we keep new toothbrushes under the sink so you can use one of those and the toothpaste in the medicine cabinet in the mirror okay see you in the morning!” Then she practically runs back up the stairs before Robin can say anything to her.

She shuts the door to her room immediately, still not turning on the light as she strips out of her prom dress, letting it lie in a crumpled mess on the floor. She finds another semi-clean t shirt and pair of shorts in her laundry and pulls them on, not bothering to brush her teeth before crawling into bed even though she knows her breath probably smells just as bad as Robin’s did in the kitchen. She’s suddenly so tired her eyelids feel physically heavy. She doesn’t close her shades, instead letting the moon in her window like a nightlight as she drifts almost immediately off to sleep, grateful for the respite from her own thoughts.


	3. Chapter 3

It’s a long time before Robin goes to sleep. She creeps into the bathroom downstairs, which doesn’t have a shower. She would love nothing more than to shower, right now, but she doesn’t want to have to ask Nancy about it. Instead, she strips out of her clothes and puts on the ones Nancy gave her delicately, then does her best to clean her face with the bar of hand soap in the bathroom and brushes her teeth for about ten minutes straight with one of the toothbrushes from under the sink.. Ever since puking in the bathroom, she’s felt pretty sober, but that hasn’t made the night any less weird. As she makes up the sheets as best she can on the couch – she’s never been good at this sort of thing – she thinks about what Steve had said to her before she got out of his car.

After Nancy had gotten out he’d turned to her, eyebrows raised. “Tammy Thompson was taken so you go home with some other girl?” he said.

“Steve!” she said. “Stop! It’s not like that. You heard what Nancy said. This makes sense. I’ll leave first thing tomorrow morning. I’m not some creep.”

“I know you’re not a creep,” Steve said. “That’s not what I meant. I just thought you hated her.”

“I do hate her,” Robin said. “I don’t know. Can we not talk about this? I have to go.”

“You know,” Steve said, “when I told you I loved Nancy, I never said she loved me. I don’t think she ever loved me. I don’t know if she, like… feels that way. About guys.”

“Are you telling me—“ Robin said. “Are you trying to insinuate that _Nancy Wheeler_ and I have, uh, _that_ in common? Just because some girl doesn’t love you, Steve, it doesn’t automatically mean she’s sworn off boys forever. Do I need to remind you that we literally gave her a ride because her _boyfriend_ asked us to?”

Steve shrugged. “Her boyfriend that she was _fighting_ with. I’m just saying. I’m over her, you know. Fully. Just so you know. I don’t care what, uh, is going on between you two. I’m supportive, really.”

“Steve!” Robin hissed. “Look, even if you _were_ right about that, which you aren’t, it still wouldn’t mean I’d like her. I’m not desperate.”

Steve shrugged.

Nancy had looked back at her then. Grateful for any excuse to cut the conversation short, she’d waved at Nancy apologetically, then told Steve, “Look, I really have to go.” It had been all she could do not to run out of the car and away from the conversation.

Still, though, the conversation with Steve had freaked her out a little bit. She’d tried not to read too much into her conversation with Nancy in the bathroom. Yes, Nancy had told her that she “had nice collar bones” but Nancy was also, by her own admission, not just drunk but also stoned for the first time ever. So Robin had tried to push her conversation with Steve to the back of her mind, and as the evening had worn on she’d tried to remind herself that Nancy was just drunk and sad about her dead best friend. Robin still can’t really imagine what that must be like.

Still, though. Nancy had seemed pretty insistent. Going on about not being perfect, asking Robin so much about why she didn’t like Steve, talking about her friendship with Barb in that weird way… still, though. The “spin the bottle” suggestion had really thrown Robin.

_And why did I lean in?_ Robin thinks to herself. _Why did I almost kiss her?_ Even if Nancy is a lesbian, which Robin _still_ isn’t convinced she is, does Robin really want to get mixed up with a girl who, by her own admission, basically has no friends and is still fucked up about her dead maybe also gay friend? It seems like there are a lot of layers to the situation, none of which are good.

Robin can’t believe she’s lying here in Nancy Wheeler’s living room thinking obsessively about Nancy Wheeler when just hours ago she had drank until she’d puked because of Tammy Thompson. Good old Tammy Thompson, the girl that she was, regrettably, still hung up on, even after Steve had rightly pointed out to her that Tammy sang like a Muppet. Like she’d told Nancy, Robin had gone to prom mostly on Steve’s urging. He said she shouldn’t let some girl make her miss out on a quintessential high school experience that she would never get back. She should’ve known that just because Mr. Popular had had fun at his prom didn’t mean that she would. She’d been so upset watching Tammy with her date that when some weirdo guy that she vaguely knew from her math class had revealed to her that he’d snuck in vodka, she’d perhaps overindulged.

So, yes, Nancy had looked good in her prom dress and weirdly said that her collarbones looked good and then they had had that weird moment in the kitchen. But Robin had been drinking, and Nancy had been drinking. So, yes, does she maybe feel the tinniest bit of regret, like maybe there was a missed opportunity there in the kitchen? Yes, maybe. But that’s just because it’s hard to believe that the opportunity to kiss another girl will present itself again, at least any time soon, in Hawkins, Indiana. It’s not because she feels any kind of particular way about this particular girl. Plus, Nancy probably won’t even remember anything in the morning. Overall, Robin is definitely glad that her first kiss was not with some girl she barely knows when they were both drunk and sad and her breath had definitely smelled like puke.

In the morning, she will hopefully get up before Nancy does, and call her parents to come get her, and then later that day she’ll see Steve and tell him about it super casually and he’ll laugh about what a weirdo his ex girlfriend is and confirm that he was just teasing Robin in the car and that the whole situation is so not a big deal. And then she can get back to her life of working in a video store with her weird straight guy best friend and pining after straight girls who sang like Muppets and will probably never speak to her in her life. Because that is her type, not somewhat deranged girls who shoot monsters with guns then turn up to school dances dressed in all pink and embarrassed that their boyfriend listens to the Clash. Her type is definitely not girls who give her weird compliments then fight with her and tell her she’s a weird loser while eating whole bags of Oreos and then suggest that they play spin the bottle in an empty kitchen on prom night. That _so_ isn’t her type, right? Right?

***

Nancy wakes up early the next morning thirstier than she’s ever been in her life and immediately panicked about the fact that _Robin_ is still on the couch downstairs and she said all that _batshit_ stuff to her last night and now she has to probably see her and talk to her at least a little bit before Robin gets a ride home. Nancy considers just lying in bed for the rest of her life and waiting until she hears Robin leave to go downstairs, but she’s not just thirsty, she’s hungry as hell too. She is craving, weirdly and specifically, French toast more than anything in the world. 

Nancy lies in bed for about half an hour, listening intently to see if she can hear any noise downstairs that might indicate whether Robin is awake or not, and she thinks about French toast the whole time. Finally, she starts to get a little nauseous, which always happens to her when she waits too long to eat breakfast in the morning. She decides that since she hasn’t heard anything from downstairs yet, Robin has either already left or is maybe still sleeping, but either way, she can’t put off going down to the kitchen any longer.

Nancy has, in fact, never made French toast before, but she’s watched her mom do it and she thinks she can probably figure it out. She decides it will give her something to do to take her mind off the disaster that was last night, so she stands up. She’s too hungry to bother changing clothes, but she does at least brush her teeth thoroughly before going down to the kitchen. As she makes her way to the bottom of the stairs, she sees with a sinking heart that Robin is still asleep in the living room; Nancy walks past her very quickly, not really looking at the couch lest Robin wake up right then and see Nancy seemingly staring. She makes it into the kitchen and chugs two glasses of water in a row before she starts rummaging around for ingredients for French toast.

Let’s see. What will she need? Definitely eggs, and bread, both of which she finds easily and puts on the counter. She knows other stuff goes in it too, but she’s not sure what. For a minute, she tries to look through some of her mom’s cookbooks to see if she can find a recipe but quickly gets impatient. Well, she’s pretty sure she needs vanilla and cinnamon. That seems like enough. Having fetched those, Nancy begins cracking eggs into a bowl and adding cinnamon and vanilla. She’s not sure how much of anything she needs and almost sticks her finger in the bowl to taste it before realizing that eating raw eggs is probably inadvisable.

Having approximated the amount of cinnamon and vanilla needed to the best of her ability, she goes to dip the bread in the bowl but realizes it’s way too shallow to really get the bread in there. She tries to bend the bread a little and ends up breaking the first slice into pieces by accident. Frustrated, she fishes the pieces of the bread out of the bowl and washes her hands. Then she roots around in the kitchen until she finds the weird brush thing her dad sometimes uses when barbequing and dips it in the mixtures, using it to coat a piece of bread.

She turns the pan on and sets the bread in it, anxiously pacing around the kitchen and pausing every minute or so to change the heat setting on the stove, first low, then medium, then low again, then high, once she gets impatient. As she’s doing this, she hears sounds from the living room; Robin must be waking up. Instead of coming into the kitchen or out through the front door, though, she hears Robin walk off in the direction of the bathroom. _Just calm down,_ Nancy tells herself. _She’ll call her parents, and then you’ll only have to make super awkward small talk for fifteen minutes at most before they come get her._

Nancy decides it’s time to flip the French toast. When she goes to put the spatula under the bread, though, she finds that’s it’s completely stuck to the pan. It takes a good minute of trying until she’s able to get it loose and flip it. After she does so, she sees that the bread is pretty burnt and some of it is, in fact, still stuck to the pan. As she is contemplating this disaster, Robin walks into the kitchen, once again wearing her prom dress.

Robin stands awkwardly in the entrance to the kitchen and says, “So, thanks for having me last night. I’m gonna, uh, call my parents now and, like, go.”

“Okay,” Nancy says, glancing away from her ruined French toast only very briefly.

She expects to hear Robin walk away, but instead Robin keeps standing in the kitchen doorway. “Uh, what’s that, if you don’t mind my asking?” she says. Nancy looks up again to see that Robin is pointing at her ruined French toast.

Nancy, still holding the spatula in one hand, puts her hands on her hips. “Well, it was _supposed_ to be French toast.”

“And how’s that working out for you?” Robin says. She’s smirking now.

“Well, not well, obviously,” Nancy says.

“I don’t understand how it got _so_ burnt,” Robin tells her, coming closer to inspect the sad, burned piece of what might’ve been French toast. Nancy stands anxiously behind her, looking over her shoulder. “Did you not use butter?”

“No,” Nancy says. “Are you supposed to?”

“How else would it not stick to the pan?!” Robin says.

“Well I don’t know!” Nancy says. “I don’t cook very often!”

“You know, you’re really going to have to learn to cook a lot better than this if you’re going to make a good housewife one day.”

“I don’t want to be a _housewife_.”

“Sorry, sorry,” Robin says, putting up her hands in mock-apology and not looking sorry at all. “Steve told me you’re a Republican, so I just _assuuumed_ …”

Nancy rolls her eyes. “Just because I support _fiscal responsibility in government_ …”

Robin turns back around and waves her hands in front of Nancy, cutting her off. “No, no, no, it is _way_ too early for me to be having this conversation with you.”

Nancy glances at the clock. “It’s 10 am,” she says.

Robin shrugs. “My point still stands.” For a second, no one says anything, and all the awkwardness of last night comes rushing back. Nancy expects Robin to make her excuses and go call her parents, but instead she says, “Look, it’s truly horrifying to me that one person can fuck up French toast this badly, plus I’m hungry, so if you would be all right with a _liberal_ using your kitchen to rescue your French toast…”

“Oh my God,” Nancy says. “Yes, fine. Enlighten me on all the ways I have apparently fucked this French toast up.”

“Well, first of all, it’s gonna take forever to get the bread off this pan,” Robin says. She turns the stove off and goes over to the trashcan with the pan, tipping the burned piece of brad into it before setting the pan in the sink. “So I’m going to soak this one. Can you get us another pan to use?” Nancy obliges and finds a new one while Robin pours dish soap and hot water into the other pan.

“Okay, so, where is your butter?” Robin says. “And, while you’re at it, what did you put into this mixture? I want to make sure you didn’t fuck anything else up.”

Nancy lists off the ingredients that she used while she grabs the butter out of the fridge.

“Okay, well, get some milk as well, because that is also a key ingredient,” Robin says, giving her a look.

“Look, I don’t _know_ ,” Nancy says, shrugging as she hands over the butter and milk.

For a minute, Nancy watches Robin cook in silence. Maybe because Robin has something she’s focused on, it’s a less awkwardly charged silence than the one just a minute ago. _This is weirdly nice,_ Nancy thinks. It reminds her of Saturday mornings when Barb was over. Not that Robin is anything like Barb, that this near-stranger could ever replace her. She and Barb ate exclusively cereal, or sometimes Barb would make really good scrambled eggs, and Barb would’ve never given Nancy a hard time about not knowing how to cook. But for the first time, Nancy feels like she can picture one day having a close friend again. It will be different, but not bad.

Still, there seems to be only so much silence either of them can take, because Robin eventually speaks up, telling Nancy, “You know, I said I didn’t want to talk politics this early in the morning, but that’s really not a cohesive political platform. Are those your political beliefs? Fiscal responsibility but women don’t have to know how to make good French toast? Personally, I think _everyone_ should have to know how to make good French toast. I would mandate it.” Robin has added milk to the egg mixture and poured it into a smallish square Tupperware that the bread can lay flat in so it’s much easier to coat each slice. There is butter in the pan and a piece of bread cooking on medium heat, so Robin apparently has time to look away and give Nancy shit.

“Look, I didn’t think you expected me to give you a whole cohesive rundown of my politics on a Saturday morning!”

“Oh, so now that I’m asking you to defend yourself, _now_ you agree it’s too early to talk politics.”

“I’m not saying that, I’m just saying you should let me explain myself better before you start putting words in my mouth. Besides, don’t you think it’s a little bit much to have the government mandating cooking skills for people.”

Robin laughs. “Oh no, no one better tell you about Home Ec class.”

“That’s not the same thing,” Nancy says crossly. She knows Robin was joking about the “everyone must know how to cook French toast thing”, and she knows she isn’t even really making any sense right now, but Nancy has never been one to back down from an argument. And apparently Robin hasn’t either. Standing there in her kitchen, in the morning perfectly sober with the sun coming in the window and another pointless argument between them, seeing Robin standing there with one hand holding a spatula and one hand on her hip, hair still messed up and looking so sure that she’s right about everything, Nancy says, maybe just because she knows it’s the one thing that will really throw Robin off, but maybe not just because of that – Nancy says, “I still want to.”

“You still want to what?” Robin says, feigning ignorance, but Nancy knows that Robin knows what she means. Her smirk is gone. She looks incredulous. She looks a whole lot of things all at once.

Nancy closes the short distance between them, runs a hand through Robin’s hair, hesitantly, waiting for Robin to leap away from her. But Robin doesn’t. “You really need to do something about your hair,” Nancy says quietly, looking at Robin, a question in her eyes.

“Oh, shut up,” Robin says, and then she kisses Nancy.

It’s soft at first, and hesitant, and then Nancy feels Robin’s hands in her hair, cupping her face. She hears the spatula clatter to the kitchen floor. The kiss is angry and sweet all at once, and nothing like any time a boy has kissed her in her life. Nancy feels breathless and scared and likes she never wants it to stop, but after a minute, Robin pulls away, looking at her.

“Wow,” she says. “Did I just kiss a Republican?”

“Oh my God,” Nancy says. “Shut up. _That’s_ what’s so unbelievable to you?”

“So you _are_ a Republican!” Robin says. “Steve was right!”

“Yeah, and you kissed me,” Nancy says, smiling. “You disagree with my stance on fiscal responsibility in government, but you kissed me anyway, so what does that say about you?”

“Oh, no,” Robin says, picking the spatula up off the floor and going to wash it in the sink. “You are _so_ not using that kiss to win an argument. It was a nice kiss, sure, but don’t think that it means that I’ll forget that you don’t know how to make French toast or that you have bad political views.”

“So you think it was a nice kiss,” Nancy says, smirking.

“I didn’t say that,” Robin says.

“I think you did.”

“Look, I—“ Robin starts, then stops, drying off the spatula and going over and flipping the bread, which has not stuck to the pan and is a perfect, golden brown on the other side. “Look, I really do need to call my parents. They’re going to start worrying that I’ve died or something.” Part of Nancy is worried that she’s freaked Robin out, that the kiss was some sort of weird fluke and now Robin is running away to tell everyone what a freak Nancy is. But Robin doesn’t look angry, or disgusted with Nancy. Nancy reminds herself that _Robin_ is the one who kissed her. If anything, Robin just looks confused, which is fair, because Nancy is also confused, and as much as part of her worries about why Robin suddenly wants to leave, part of her also wants Robin to leave, so that she can be confused all by herself.

“Yeah, okay, fine,” Nancy says. “You know where the phone is.”

Robin goes into the other room and talks to her parents briefly while Nancy busies herself getting two plates and some forks and maple syrup out. When Robin comes back, she tells Nancy, “They’ll be here in, like, fifteen minutes,” then takes the piece of French toast out of the pan and puts it onto one of the plates.

“Well, you should eat at least one piece of French toast before you leave,” Nancy says, gesturing to the plate.

“I don’t know,” Robin says. “I’m worried about stepping away from the pan and leaving you in charge.”

“Oh, come on, it’s not that hard. What, I just have to put butter down first and then just watch a piece of bread sit there for like five minutes, right?” Nancy knows that her “right?” undercuts her feigned confidence in her abilities to now make French toast, but she can’t help it. She’s still a little scarred from how badly she messed up the first piece.

“Right,” Robin says, stepping away from the pan and pouring maple syrup on the finished piece. “Just to be sure, I will stand here and supervise.” She then proceeds to do just that, watching Nancy put the next piece of bread in the pan without saying anything.

The next fifteen minutes are mostly spent focused on making and eating French toast. There is no further discussion of the kiss, or Republicanism, or anything like that. Eventually, they both hear a car pull up in the driveway outside, and Robin goes to set her plate in the sink, stuffing her last bite of French toast in her mouth and chewing quickly before saying, “Well, I guess that’s my dad.”

“I guess so,” Nancy says, setting down her own plate.

“Well, cool,” Robin says. “Thanks for having me over.”

She starts to walk toward the door when Nancy says, “Robin, wait.”

Robin turns around, looking at Nancy.

“I just—“ Nancy wants to ask what the kiss meant, but she’s scared of the answer. She doesn’t even know herself what she wants. So all she says is, “Uh, what are you doing, like, this summer?”

“Just in general?” Robin asks.

“Yeah, I don’t know. Like, are you going to be around?”

“I don’t know,” Robin says. “Do you want me to be around?”

“I don’t know,” Nancy says. “Maybe.”

“Well, maybe I will be,” Robin says. “I’ll be working at the video store,” she adds after a second.

“Well, maybe I’ll stop by,” Nancy says.

“Okay,” Robin tells her. “And maybe I’ll call you, or something.”

“Okay,” says Nancy, and then Robin is gone, walking out her front door and into the sunlight. Nancy can’t see it, but Robin is smiling.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! As always, kudos and comments are greatly appreciated! I might add more chapters not just expanding on Robin/Nancy but also exploring more of Robin & Steve's friendship and a Steve/Jonathan relationship but we'll see!


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